The Collected Stories

by Isaac Bashevis Singer

  “This is the girl you are to marry,” Reb Bunim said. “There’s no need for you to be bashful.”

  Lise had on a black silk dress and around her neck was a string of pearls, which was the present she had been given for this occasion. Her hair appeared almost red under the glow of candlelight, and on the finger of her left hand she wore a ring with the letter “M” inscribed upon it, the first letter of the words mazel tov. At the moment of Shloimele’s entrance she had been holding an embroidered handkerchief in her hand but upon seeing him it had fallen from her fingers. One of the girls in the room walked over and picked it up.

  “It’s a very fine evening,” Shloimele said to Lise.

  “And an excellent summer,” answered the bride and her two attendants.

  “Perhaps it’s a trifle hot,” Shloimele observed.

  “Yes, it is hot,” the three girls answered again in unison.

  “Do you think the fault is mine?” Shloimele asked in a sort of singsong. “It is said in the Talmud …”

  But Shloimele didn’t get any further as Lise interrupted him. “I know very well what the Talmud says. ‘A donkey is cold even in the month of Tammuz.’ ”

  “Oh, a Talmudic scholar!” Shloimele exclaimed in surprise, and the tips of his ears reddened.

  Very soon after that, the conversation ended and everyone began to crowd into the room. But Rabbi Ozer did not approve of the bride and groom meeting before the wedding, and he ordered them to be separated. So Shloimele was once more surrounded only by men and the celebration continued until daybreak.

  IV

  Love

  From the very first moment that she saw him Lise loved Shloimele deeply. At times she believed that his face had been shown to her in a dream before the marriage. At other times she was certain that they had been married before in some other existence. The truth was that I, the Evil Spirit, required so great a love for the furtherance of my schemes.

  At night when Lise slept I sought out his spirit and brought it to her and the two of them spoke and kissed and exchanged love tokens. All of her waking thoughts were of him. She held his image within her and addressed it, and this fiction within her replied to her words. She bared her soul to it, and it consoled her and uttered the words of love that she longed to hear. When she put on a dress or a nightgown she imagined that Shloimele was present, and she felt shy and was pleased that her skin was pale and smooth. Occasionally she would ask this apparition those questions which had baffled her since childhood: “Shloimele, what is the sky? How deep is the earth? Why is it hot in summer and cold in the winter? Why do corpses gather at night to pray in the synagogue? How can one see a demon? Why does one see one’s reflection in a mirror?”

  And she even imagined that Shloimele answered each of these questions. There was one other question that she asked the shadow in her mind: “Shloimele, do you really love me?”

  Shloimele reassured her that no other girl was equal to her in beauty. And in her daydreams she saw herself drowning in the river San and Shloimele rescued her. She was abducted by evil spirits and he saved her. Indeed, her mind was all daydreams, so confused had love made her.

  But as it happened, Reb Bunim postponed the wedding until the Sabbath after Pentecost and so Lise was forced to wait nearly three-quarters of a year longer. Now, through her impatience, she understood what misery Jacob had undergone when he had been forced to wait seven years before marrying Rachel. Shloimele remained at the rabbi’s house and would not be able to visit Lise again until Hanukkah. The young girl often stood at the window in a vain attempt to catch a glimpse of him, for the path from the rabbi’s to the study house did not pass Reb Bunim’s. The only news that Lise received of him was from the girls who came to see her. One reported that he had grown slightly taller and another said that he was studying the Talmud with the other young men at the study house. A third girl observed that obviously the rabbi’s wife was not feeding Shloimele properly, as he had become quite thin. But out of modesty Lise refrained from questioning her friends too closely; nevertheless, she blushed each time her beloved’s name was mentioned. In order to make the winter pass more quickly, she began to embroider for her husband-to-be a phylactery bag and a cloth to cover the Sabbath loaf. The bag was of black velvet, upon which she sewed in gold thread a star of David along with Shloimele’s name and the date of the month and year. She took even greater pains with the tablecloth, on which were stitched two loaves of bread and a goblet. The words “Holy Sabbath” were done in silver thread, and in the four corners the heads of a stag, a lion, a leopard, and an eagle were embroidered. Nor did she forget to line the seams of the cloth with beads of various colors and she decorated the edges with fringes and tassels. The girls of Kreshev were overwhelmed by her skill and begged to copy the pattern she had used.

  Her engagement had altered Lise: she had become even more beautiful. Her skin was white and delicate; her eyes gazed off into space. She moved through the house with the silent step of a somnambulist. From time to time she would smile for no reason at all, and she would stand in front of the mirror for hours on end, arranging her hair and speaking to her reflection as though she had been bewitched. Now if a beggar came to the house she received him graciously and gladly offered him alms. After every meal she went to the poorhouse, bringing soup and meat to the ill and indigent. The poor unfortunates would smile and bless her: “May God grant that you soon eat soup at your wedding.”

  And Lise quietly added her own “Amen.”

  Since time continued to hang heavy on her hands, she often browsed among the books in her father’s library. There she came across one entitled The Customs of Marriage in which it was stated that the bride must purify herself before the ceremony, keep track of her periods and attend the ritual bath. The book also enumerated the wedding rites, told of the period of the seven nuptial benedictions, admonished husband and wife on their proper conduct, paying particular attention to the woman and setting forth a myriad of details. Lise found all of this very interesting since she already had some idea of what went on between the sexes and had even witnessed the love-play of birds and animals. She began to meditate carefully on what she had read, and spent several sleepless nights deep in thought. Her modesty became more intense than it had ever been before, and her face grew flushed and she became feverish; her behavior was so strange that the servant thought she had been bewitched by the evil eye, and sang incantations to cure her. Every time the name of Shloimele was mentioned, she blushed—whether she was included in the reference or not; and whenever anyone approached, she concealed the book of instructions she was forever reading. What was more, she became anxious and suspicious and soon she had got herself into such a state that she both looked forward to the day of marriage and turned away in dread. But Shifrah Tammar just went on preparing her daughter’s trousseau. Though estranged from her daughter, she nevertheless wanted the wedding to be so magnificent that the event would live on for years in the minds of the people of Kreshev.

  V

  The Wedding

  The wedding was indeed a grand one. Dressmakers from Lublin had made the bride’s garments. For weeks there had been seamstresses at Reb Bunim’s house, embroidering and stitching lace on nightgowns, lingerie, and shirtwaists. Lise’s wedding gown had been made of white satin and its train was a full four cubits in length. As for food, the cooks had baked a Sabbath loaf which was almost the size of a man and was braided at both ends. Never before had such a bread been seen in Kreshev. Reb Bunim had spared no expense; at his order, sheep, calves, hens, geese, ducks, capons had been slaughtered for the wedding feast. There was also fish from the river San and Hungarian wines and mead supplied by the local innkeeper. The day of the wedding Reb Bunim commanded that the poor of Kreshev be fed, and when word got around an assortment of riffraff from the neighboring district drifted into town to surfeit themselves also. Tables and benches were set up in the street and the beggars were served white Sabbath loaves, stuffed carp, meat stewed in vineg
ar, gingerbread and tankards of ale. Musicians played for the vagrants and the traditional wedding jester entertained them. The tattered multitude formed circles in the center of the marketplace and danced and jigged delightedly. Everyone was singing and bellowing and the noise was deafening. At evening, the wedding guests began to assemble at Reb Bunim’s house. The women wore beaded jackets, headbands, furs, all of their jewelry. The girls had on silk dresses and pointed shoes made especially for the occasion, but inevitably the dressmakers and cobblers had been unable to fill all orders and there were quarrels. There was more than one girl who stayed home, huddling close to the stove the night of the wedding and, unlucky one, weeping her eyes out.

  That day Lise fasted and when it was prayer time confessed her sins. She beat her breast as though it were the Day of Atonement for she knew that on one’s wedding day all one’s transgressions are forgiven. Although she was not particularly pious, and at times even wavered in her faith, as is common with those who are reflective, on this occasion she prayed with great fervor. She also offered up prayers for the man who by the end of the day would have become her husband. When Shifrah Tammar came into the room and saw her daughter standing in a corner with tears in her eyes and beating herself with her fists, she blurted out, “Look at the girl! A real saint!”—and she demanded that Lise stop crying or her eyes would look red and puffy when she stood beneath the canopy.

  But you can take my word for it, it was not religious fervor that was causing Lise to weep. For days and weeks before the wedding I had been busy applying myself. All sorts of strange and evil thoughts had been tormenting the girl. One moment she feared that she might not be a virgin at all, and the next she would dream about the instant of deflowering and would burst into tears, fearful that she would not be able to stand the pain. At other times she would be torn by shame, and the very next second would fear that on her wedding night she would perspire unduly, or become sick to her stomach, or wet the bed, or suffer worse humiliation. She also had a suspicion that an enemy had bewitched her, and she searched through her clothing, looking for hidden knots. She wanted to be done with these anxieties but she couldn’t control them. “Possibly,” she said to herself on one occasion, “I am only dreaming this and I am not to be married at all. Or, perhaps, my husband is some sort of a devil who has materialized in human form and the wedding ceremony will be only a fantasy and the guests, spirits of evil.”

  This was only one of the nightmares she suffered. She lost her appetite, became constipated, and though she was envied by all the girls in Kreshev, none knew the agony she was undergoing.

  Since the bridegroom was an orphan, his father-in-law, Reb Bunim, took care of supplying him with a wardrobe. He ordered for his son-in-law two coats made of fox fur, one for everyday and one for the Sabbath, two gaberdines, one of silk and one of satin, a cloth overcoat, a couple of dressing gowns, several pairs of trousers, a thirteen-pointed hat edged with skunk, as well as a Turkish prayer shawl with three ornaments. Included in the gifts to the bridegroom were a silver spice box upon which a picture of the wailing wall was engraved, a golden citron container, a breadknife with a mother-of-pearl handle, a tobacco box with an ivory lid, a silk-bound set of the Talmud, and a prayer book with silver covers. At the bachelor dinner, Shloimele spoke brilliantly. First of all, he propounded ten questions which seemed to be absolutely basic, and then he answered all ten with a single statement. But after having disposed of these essential questions, he turned around and showed that the questions he had asked were not really questions at all, and the enormous façade of erudition he had erected tumbled to nothing. His audience was left amazed and speechless.

  I won’t linger too long over the actual ceremony. Suffice it to say that the crowd danced, sang and jumped about the way crowds always do at a wedding, particularly when the richest man in town marries off his daughter. A couple of tailors and shoemakers tried to dance with the serving girls, but were chased away. Several of the guests became drunk and started to jig, shouting “Sabbath, Sabbath.” Several of the others sang Yiddish songs which began with words like “What does a poor man cook? Borscht and potatoes …” The musicians sawed away on their fiddles, blared with their trumpets, clanged their cymbals, pounded their drums, piped on their flutes and bagpipes. Ancient crones lifted their trains, pushed back their bonnets, and danced, facing each other and clapping hands, but then when their faces almost touched they turned away as if in rage, all of which made the onlookers laugh even more heartily. Shifrah Tammar, despite her usual protestations of bad health (she could scarcely lift her foot from the floor), was recruited by one of the bands of merrymakers and forced to perform both a kozotsky and a scissor dance. As is usual at weddings, I the Arch-Fiend arranged the customary number of jealous spats, displays of vanity and outbursts of wantonness and boasting. When the girls performed the water dance they pulled their skirts up over their ankles as though they were actually wading in the water and the idlers peering in through the windows could not help having their imaginations inflamed. And so anxious was the wedding jester to entertain that he sang countless songs of love for the guests, and corrupted the meaning of Scriptures by interpolating obscenities into the midst of sacred phrases as do the clowns on Purim, and hearing all this, the girls and young matrons clapped their hands and squealed with joy. Suddenly the entertainment was interrupted by a woman’s scream. She had lost her brooch and had fainted from anxiety. Though everyone searched high and low, the piece could not be found. A moment later there was more excitement when one of the girls claimed that a young man had pricked her thigh with a needle. This outburst over, it was time for the virtue dance, and while this dance was going on, Shifrah Tammar and the bridesmaids led Lise off to the bridal chamber, which was on the ground floor and so heavily draped and curtained that no light could shine through. On their way to the room the women gave her advice on how to conduct herself, and cautioned her not to be afraid when she saw the groom since the first commandments bid us to propagate and multiply. Shortly after that, Reb Bunim and another man escorted the groom to his bride.

  Well, this is one instance when I’m not going to satisfy your curiosity and tell you what went on in the wedding chamber. It is enough to say that when Shifrah Tammar entered the room in the morning, she found her daughter hiding under the quilt and too ashamed to speak to her. Shloimele was already out of bed and in his own room. It took a good deal of coaxing before Lise would permit her mother to examine the sheets, and indeed, there was blood on them.

  “Mazel tov, daughter,” Shifrah Tammar exclaimed. “You are now a woman and share with us all the curse of Eve.”

  And weeping, she threw her arms about Lise’s neck and kissed her.

  VI

  Strange Behavior

  Immediately after the wedding Reb Bunim rode off into the woods to tend to some business, and Shifrah Tammar returned to her sickbed and medicines. The young men at the study house had been of the opinion that once Shloimele was married he would become the head of a yeshiva and dedicate himself to the affairs of the community, which seemed appropriate for a prodigy who was also the son-in-law of a wealthy man. But Shloimele did no such thing. He turned out to be a stay-at-home. He couldn’t seem to get to the morning services on time and as soon as the concluding “On us” was said, he was out the door and on his way home. Nor did he think of hanging around after evening prayers. The women around town said that Shloimele went to bed right after supper, and there could be no doubt that the green shutter on his bedroom stayed closed until late in the day. There were also reports from Reb Bunim’s maid. She said that the young couple carried on in the most scandalous ways. They were always whispering together, telling each other secrets, consulting books together, and calling each other odd nicknames. They also ate from the same dish, drank from the same goblet, and held hands the way young men and women of the Polish aristocracy did. Once the maid had seen Shloimele hitch up Lise with a sash as if she were a dray horse and then proceed to whip her wit
h a twig. Lise had cooperated in this game by simulating the whinny and gait of a mare. Another game the maid had seen them play was one in which the winner pulls the earlobes of the loser, and she swore that they had continued this nonsense until the ears of both of them had been a blood red.

  Yes, the couple were in love, and each day only increased their passion. When he went off to pray she stood at the window watching him disappear as if he were off on some long journey; and when she retired to the kitchen to prepare some broth or a dish of oat grits, Shloimele tagged along or else he immediately called, demanding that she hurry out. On Sabbath, Lise forgot to pray at the synagogue but stood behind the lattice and watched Shloimele in his prayer shawl going about his devotions at the eastern wall. And he, in turn, would gaze upwards at the women’s section to catch a glimpse of her. This display also set vicious tongues wagging, but none of this bothered Reb Bunim, who was most gratified to learn how well his daughter and son-in-law got on. Each time he returned from a trip he came bearing presents. But, on the other hand, Shifrah Tammar was very far from pleased. She did not approve of this eccentric behavior, these whispered words of endearment, these perpetual kisses and caresses. Nothing like this had ever happened in her father’s house, nor had she even seen such goings-on among ordinary people. She felt disgraced and began rebuking both Lise and Shloimele. This was a kind of conduct that she could not tolerate.